THE RED TERROR AND THE WHITE
I
Thirteen days after the inauguration, the Senate, having confirmed the
Cabinet, adjourned, and the Administration could look forward to almost
nine months of non-interference from the Congress. The pre-inaugural
prediction that the President would adopt a policy of proscription of
his political foes was almost immediately justified by events. The
“spoils system,” as an important cog in the machinery of political
parties, thus frankly recognized, dates from this time. Through all the
intervening years the civil service reformers have indulged in the most
bitter denunciation of Jackson on the untenable theory that but for him
public offices would never have been used as the spoils of party. Some
of the most conscientious of historians have created the impression that
the adoption of a prescriptive policy was due to something inherently
wrong in the President. As a matter of fact, Jackson was the victim of
conditions and circumstances, and the new political weapon grew out of
the exigencies of a new political era.
For many years political parties had been chaotic, vapory, and
indefinite; and if the politics of the young Republic had not been
drifting toward personal government, it had been partaking of the nature
of government by cliques and classes. The first Message of John Quincy
Adams had made the definite division of the people into political
parties inevitable--these parties standing for well-defined,
antagonistic policies. Van Buren had early caught the drift and had
cleverly organized a party standing for principles and policies, rather
than for personalities. John M. Clayton, soon to become one of the
outstanding figures of the Opposition to the Jackson Administration, who
had seldom voted even in presidential elections because of his
indifference to the mere ambitions of individuals, understood that in
1828 something more was involved, and threw himself into the contest in
support of Adams. And Clay was even then looking forward to the
organization of a party pledged to internal improvements and a
protective tariff.
The Jackson Administration marks the beginning of political parties as
we have known them for almost a century.
It was in this compaign, too, that the masses awakened to the fact that
they had interests involved, and possessed power. Previous to this the
aristocracy, the business and financial interests, and the
intellectuals, alone, determined the governmental personnel. Men went
into training for the Presidency, and, as in a lodge, passed, as a
matter of course, from the Cabinet to the Vice-Presidency, and thence to
the chief magistracy. An office-holding class, feeling itself secure in
a life tenure, had grown up.
As we have seen, the election of Jackson was due to the rising of the
masses. Thousands who had never before participated in politics played
influential parts in the campaign. The victory, they considered theirs.
Thus they had flocked to Washington as never before to an inauguration,
rejoicing in the induction of “their” President into office, and all too
many pressing claims to recognition and entertaining hopes of entering
upon their reward. Before the inauguration, the grim old warrior,
awaiting the opportunity, at Gadsby’s, to take the oath of office, had
been fairly mobbed by ardent partisans of his cause, demanding the
expulsion of the enemy and the appointment of his supporters to office.
The Jackson press had been particularly insistent upon this point. Duff
Green, of the “National Telegraph,” had early announced that he
naturally assumed that the office-holders who had actively campaigned
for Adams would make way for the victors. This same feeling had spread
into every community in the country. Isaac Hill, writing in the “New
Hampshire Patriot” immediately after the election, had sounded the
onslaught for the Democracy of New England.[177] And soon after reaching
Washington, and sensing the atmosphere at Gadsby’s, the New England
editor had written joyously to a friend: “You may say to all our anxious
Adamsites that THE BARNACLES WILL BE SCRAPED CLEAN OFF THE SHIP OF
STATE. Most of them have grown so large and stick so tight that the
scraping process will doubtless be fatal to them.”
Before Jackson’s entry into the White House, the scenes in and about
Gadsby’s were scarcely less than scandalous. A great perspiring mob
swarmed in the streets in front, crowded the tap-room, jostled its way
in the halls, and, notwithstanding the efforts of Major Lewis, it
demanded and secured admission to the President’s private apartment. All
admitted themselves responsible for Jackson’s election. Amos Kendall,
encountering a pompous stranger on the Avenue, was invited to look upon
the man who had “delivered Pennsylvania.”[178] James A. Hamilton, who
was close to Jackson in the early days of the Administration, was
importuned by an Indianian, who had taken the electoral vote of the
State to the Capitol, to intercede on his behalf for the Register’s
office at Crawfordsville, or the Marshalship. This typical office-seeker
had “calculated to remain a few weeks ... hoping that some of these
violent Adams men may receive their walking papers.” He carried letters
of recommendation from all the Democratic members of the State
Legislature “for any office I can ask.” But, in view of the brisk
competition, would not Hamilton kindly recall that he had received
letters from the Hoosier bearing on the campaign, and personally testify
to the important part he had played?[179] Others depended upon the
length of their petitions, and two applicants from Pennsylvania, for the
same office, had signers so numerous that the number had to be estimated
by the length of the sheets.[180]
Meanwhile there is no question but that Jackson was eager to serve his
friends, if not to punish his enemies. From the moment of his election,
he had entertained no illusions as to the character of the opposition
his Administration would encounter. It was an open secret that his
enemies, long before the inauguration, had begun to organize for the
discrediting of his Administration. He was familiar with the bitterness
of Clay. And, with the determination to make his Administration a
success, from his point of view, he turned his attention to preparations
for the fight. His military training told him that it was fatal to enter
a campaign with traitors in the camp. The disloyalty from which Adams
had suffered had not been lost upon him.[181] And he had fixed
convictions as to political organization. “To give effect to any
principles,” he said, “you must avail yourself of the physical force of
an organized body of men. This is true alike in war, politics, or
religion. You cannot organize men in effective bodies without giving
them a reason for it. And when the organization is once made, you cannot
keep it together unless you hold constantly before its members why they
are organized.”[182] Thus party politics, in the modern sense, began
with Jackson, and the spoils system grew out of the exigencies of party
politics. Vicious though it may be, it is significant of its appeal to
the rank and file of party workers, upon whom party success depends,
that politicians of all parties, including Lincoln, have adopted it
without shame.
It does not appear that Jackson was greatly influenced in his course by
his advisers, of either his constitutional or Kitchen Cabinet. Van
Buren, who has been wrongfully accused of so many things, and among
others, of having been the dominating influence as to the spoils system,
heard of the plan for sweeping changes with grave misgivings. “If the
General makes one removal at this time,” he said in a letter to Hamilton
written from Albany, “he must go on. So far as depends on me, my course
would be to restore by a single order every one who has been turned out
by Mr. Clay for political reasons, unless circumstances of a personal
character have since arisen to make the appointment in any case
improper. To ascertain that will take a little time. There I would
pause.” This, from the head of his official family.
And the most intimate of his advisers, of the Kitchen Cabinet, Major
Lewis, is reported to have written to the President: “In relation to the
principle of rotation in office, I embrace this occasion to enter my
solemn protest against it; not on account of my office, but because I
hold it to be fraught with the greatest mischief to the country. If ever
it should be carried out _in extenso_, the days of this Republic will,
in my opinion, be numbered; for whenever the impression shall become
general that the Government is only valuable on account of its offices,
the great and paramount interests of the country will be lost sight of,
and the Government itself ultimately destroyed.” With the possible
exception of Eaton, who was a practical politician in the modern sense,
and Van Buren, to the extent just indicated, none of the members of the
Cabinet were spoilsmen at heart; and Amos Kendall, the genius of the
Kitchen Cabinet, would unquestionably have preferred to be spared the
pain of turning men out of office. To be sure, the jovial but vindictive
Duff Green, who spent much time at the elbow of Jackson in the early
months of the Administration, was insistent upon the punishment of
enemies, but the responsibility for the adoption of the policy rests
upon the President himself.
And the result was that the spring and summer months of 1829 were filled
with the clamor of importunate pleas, not unmixed with threats and
curses, from the office-seekers. In many instances the wives and
daughters of the applicants fluttered down upon Washington to reënforce
the husband and the father.[183] One of the General’s most ardent
supporters left the capital two days after the inauguration bitterly
denouncing him for his failure to appoint the irate one to a position
not then vacant.[184] Cabinet officers were harassed, bombarded,
followed from their offices to their homes and back again, until several
of them confessed that life had become a burden, and they were forced to
close their doors to applicants until a late hour in the afternoon to
find time for the transaction of public business.[185] Such aspirants as
were not upon the ground in person were either represented by friends
who were, or they peppered the members of the Cabinet with letters. One
peculiarly offensive candidate for the collectorship of customs in New
York wrote to an equally disreputable friend: “No damn rascal who made
use of an office or its profits for the purpose of keeping Mr. Adams in
and General Jackson out of power is entitled to the least leniency save
that of hanging. Whether or not I shall get anything in the general
scramble for plunder remains to be seen, but I rather guess I shall. I
know Mr. Ingham slightly, and would recommend that you push like the
devil if you expect anything from that quarter.”[186] And in the letter
from Ingham to the seeker of “plunder” we have abundant evidence that
the advice was accepted: “These [his duties] cannot be postponed; and I
do assure you that I am compelled daily to file away long lists of
recommendations, etc., without reading them, although I work eighteen
hours out of the twenty-four with all diligence. The appointments can be
postponed; other matters cannot; and it was one of the prominent errors
of the late Administration that they suffered many important public
interests to be neglected, while they were cruising about to secure or
buy up partisans. This we must not do.”[187] The same man, having
written an insolent letter to Van Buren, was sharply rebuked by him.
“Here I am,” wrote the Secretary of State, “engaged in the most
intricate and important affairs, which are new to me, and upon the
successful conduct of which my reputation as well as the interests of
the country depend, and which keep me occupied from early in the morning
until late at night. And can you think it kind or just to harass me
under such circumstances with letters which no man of common sensibility
can read without pain?... I must be plain with you.... The terms upon
which you have seen fit to place our intercourse are inadmissible.”[188]
Nor was this clamor for office confined to the more important
positions--it reached down to the most menial places, to those of the
gardener, the janitor, and messenger. Worse still--men in position to
serve were even appealed to for place by members of their immediate
families. Thus we find Amos Kendall writing to his wife: “I had thought
before of trying to get some place for your father, but I cannot do
anything until I am myself appointed. I hope in a year or two, and
perhaps sooner, to find some situation that will enable him to live near
us, and comfortably.”[189]
Meanwhile the clerks in Washington lived in a state of terror. Men who
had long worked in harmony, and on terms of intimacy, were afraid to
talk to one another. Every one suddenly assumed the aspect of a spy and
an informer. “All the subordinate officers of the Government, and even
the clerks are full of tremblings and anxiety,” wrote one woman to a
correspondent. “To add to this general gloom, we have horrible weather,
snowstorm after snowstorm, the river frozen up and the poor
suffering.”[190] The majority of the subordinates and clerks, many the
ne’er-do-wells of distinguished families, assuming that they were
assured of a life position, had lived up to, and beyond, their meager
incomes, and suddenly found themselves unfit for other employment and
confronted with dismissal.[191] And slowly, but surely, the dismissals
came, leaving many in desperate straits, without sufficient funds to
reach their homes, and unfit to earn a livelihood if they did. Some were
driven to desperation. One dismissed employee of the Custom House in
Boston went “in a transport of grief” to Ingham with a plea to be
informed of the cause of his dismissal, only to be told that offices
were not hereditary.[192] One clerk in the War Department cut his throat
from ear to ear; another in the State Department went stark mad. But all
appeals for sympathy were met by the proscriptionists with the stern
reminder: “The exclusive party who were never known to tolerate any
political opponent raise and reiterate the cry of persecution and
proscription at every removal that takes place. They have provoked
retaliation by the most profligate and abandoned course of
electioneering; the most unheard-of calumny and abuse was heaped upon
the candidate of the people; he was called by every epithet that could
designate crime, and the amiable partner of his bosom was dragged before
the people as worse than a convicted felon. What sympathy do men of such
a party deserve when complaining that the places which they have abused
are given to others?”[193]
A dark picture--and yet only darker than similar pictures in years to
follow because, in 1829, the policy was new and caught the
office-holders unprepared. So gloomy has the picture been painted that
the student of the times is prepared to learn of a general massacre of
the placemen. There was no such massacre--no such massacre as followed
the election of Lincoln. One is prepared to hear that all the enemies of
Jackson were driven from office, but, as a matter of fact, the majority
of the Federal office-holders during his régime were unmolested. This
could not be said of Roosevelt’s Administration, nor of Cleveland’s. The
exact number of removals during the first year of Jackson’s
Administration cannot be determined with precision. Schouler,[194] while
making no attempt definitely to fix the number, says that “some have
placed the number as high as two thousand.” In view of the evidence of
contemporaries available, it does seem that a fairly accurate idea
should be obtained. It is interesting to observe in this connection that
while Jackson’s enemies were dealing in sweeping generalities, his
defenders were furnishing figures.
And among the defenders none is more reliable than Thomas H. Benton,
whose veracity or personal honesty has never been impeached or
questioned, and he tells us[195] that there were whole classes of
office-holders that were not molested; that those whose functions were
of a judicial nature were not disturbed, and that in the departments at
Washington a majority remained opposed to Jackson through his two
Administrations. More important still--he tells us that Jackson not only
left a majority of his enemies in office, but that in some instances he
actually reappointed personal and political enemies where they were
“especially efficient officers.” And he lays stress upon the point that
where men, who had bitterly fought Jackson in the election, were not
reappointed, a hue and cry was raised that they had been denied a
right. Corroborating this, we have the evidence of Amos Kendall,[196]
who wrote, after the Administration had been in power a year and a half:
“He [Jackson] is charged with having turned out of office all who were
opposed to him, when a majority of the office-holders in Washington are
known to be in favor of his rivals. In that city the removals have been
but one seventh of those in office, and most of them for bad conduct and
character. In the Post-Office Department, toward which have been
directed the heaviest complaints, the removals have been only about one
sixteenth; in the whole Government, one eleventh.” And to the evidence
of both Benton and Kendall, either one of whom would have been incapable
of deliberate falsehood, we may add the less reliable, because more
prejudiced, evidence of Isaac Hill, given in a public speech at Concord
in the late summer of 1829. “It is worthy of observation,” he said,
“that at least two thirds of the offices of profit at the seat of the
National Government, after the removals thus far made, are still held by
persons who were opposed to the election of General Jackson.”[197] A
more detailed study of the removals actually made show that, while there
were 8600 post-offices in 1829, less than 800 postmasters were removed,
and these, largely, in the more important centers, leaving 7800
undisturbed.
One of the most serious charges against Jackson in connection with these
removals is that he practiced duplicity, reassuring a trembling
office-holder one day only to remove him, without warning, on the next;
and this story is based upon what the officer in charge of Indian
affairs under Adams declares to have been his personal experience.
According to his story, Eaton, his superior officer, suggested that he
should see the President to meet some charges that had been made against
him; that on visiting Jackson he had made a solemn denial, satisfied the
President, and been presented by him to the members of his household;
that on the next day a gentleman entered the Indian Office, and, after
looking around, explained that the place had been offered him by the
President that morning, but that he did not intend to accept; that the
position was afterwards offered to others, and that the dismissal
finally reached him in Philadelphia while there on official business.
This places Jackson in a sinister light; but our commissioner adds, that
one close to the Administration said: “Why, sir, everybody knows your
qualifications for the place, but General Jackson has been long
satisfied that you are not in harmony with his views in regard to the
Indians.”[198] This raises the question whether a President chosen by
the people is entitled to his own governmental policies or should be
forced to accept such as may be handed to him by subordinates who
received their appointments by preference, and not from the hands of the
people. That this removal was the President’s own idea may be gathered
from the fact that Eaton, Secretary of War, under whom Indian affairs
came, was not in favor of the dismissal.
It is worth recording that Van Buren kept his department comparatively
free from the spoils idea. But even the most intense partisan of Jackson
will be hard pressed to find any proper reason for the spiteful recall
of William Henry Harrison from Bogota, where he had just presented his
credentials as United States Minister to Colombia. This recall was
opposed very earnestly by Postmaster-General Barry, who frankly said to
the President:
“If you had seen him as I did on the Thames, you would, I think, let him
alone.”
“You may be right, Barry,” Jackson replied. “I reckon you are. But thank
God I didn’t see him there.”[199]
Dark though the picture is from the viewpoint of the civil service
reformer, there is another possible point of view. All the officials
dismissed from places were not high-minded, conscientious public
servants, for among them were numerous criminals. The dismissal of
Tobias Watkins, an Adams appointee and a personal friend of the former
President, to make place for Amos Kendall, was the occasion for a great
outburst of indignation from the Opposition. Within a month the product
of the spoils system had discovered frauds on the part of the “martyr”
to the amount of more than $7000, and an arrest followed. He was
convicted and served his time in prison. Nor was that of Watkins an
isolated case. Thus the collector at Buffalo[200] had procured false
receipts for money never paid and was given credit at the Treasury; the
collector at Key West[201] had permitted an unlawful trade between Cuba
and Florida; the collector at Bath, Maine,[202] was dismissed for
personally using $56,315 of the public funds; the collector at
Portsmouth[203] was shown to have engaged in smuggling; the collector at
St. Marks[204] was shown to have been plundering live-oak from the
public lands; the collector at Petersburg[205] had used $24,857 of the
public money; the collector at Perth Amboy[206] had made false returns,
appropriated to his own use $88,000 of the public money, and fled to
Canada; the collector at Elizabeth City, North Carolina,[207] had
converted $32,791 to his personal use and joined the other “martyr” to
the spoils system on Canadian soil.[208] In brief, the introduction of
the spoils system had resulted, in eighteen months, in the uncovering of
peculations in the Treasury Department alone of more than $280,000 by
men whose dismissal from office had called forth the unmeasured
denunciation of Jackson’s enemies, and it is manifestly unfair to
withhold these facts while placing emphasis upon the “dismissal of
collector to make way for Jackson’s henchmen.”
Thus, throughout the spring and summer of 1829, the President and his
Cabinet were bored, harassed, and tortured with importunities for place,
denounced as ingrates because they left any of the enemies in office,
and damned by the enemy for every dismissal that was made.
II
The spring and summer was the time of the Red Terror.
The White Terror of retaliation began with the meeting of the hostile
Senate in December.
The enemies of Jackson sought the earliest possible opportunity to
denounce the wholesale dismissals, and the brilliant orators of the
Opposition in the House made intemperate attacks, while in the Senate
Webster spoke against the policy of proscription, without, however,
adopting the absurd position that the President did not possess the
constitutional power.[209] The early part of the session was given over
to denunciations of the removals, and to a frankly hostile scrutiny, on
the part of the Senate, of all nominations requiring confirmation. It
foreshadowed the bitter party battles of the next eight years by
rejecting the nominations of some of Jackson’s most ardent supporters in
the campaign, and by taking the ridiculous position that journalists
should be excluded from appointive office. This proscription, or
massacre of the editors, was aimed at men, comparatively new to public
life, who were speedily to develop into the most brilliant and sagacious
of the Jacksonian leaders. Long and acrimonious executive sessions
became the rule of the Senate. In some instances, action upon
nominations was postponed for months under provocative circumstances
that were not lost upon the fighting figure at the other end of the
Avenue. The charge was made that a number of the President’s nominees
were “vicious characters.” It was in the early days of this session that
a comparatively new Senator, elected upon the supposition that he would
support the President and his policies, and destined to be the only
member of the Senate to realize personally upon that body’s venomous
hostility to the Administration, stepped forth to organize and direct
the fight against the confirmation of nominees in whom the President was
deeply interested. John Tyler led the first onslaught on the
Administration.
It is important to pause to contemplate Tyler’s character and career,
because he typifies those Democrats who were so soon to enter into
coöperation with the Whigs in opposition, and because history has been
unjust in underestimating both his capacity and courage. We shall find
him pursuing Jackson throughout the greater part of his Presidency, and
paying the penalty to the people with a manliness which found little
emulation among men to whom history has been more gracious.
John Tyler was the scion of a family distinguished in law and in
politics. His father was a fine Revolutionary figure, and one of the
first lawyers in Virginia. He inherited his father’s ability,
predilections, and prejudices. Within three months after his admission
to the bar, he was employed in every important case in the county, and
when, at the age of twenty-seven, he abandoned his practice to enter
Congress, his income was $2000 a year, which was $1300 more than
Webster’s at the same age.[210] On reaching Washington, he was cordially
welcomed by the Madisons into the White House circle. He was fond of the
society of the President’s house, disliked the French cooking, but found
consolation in the excellent champagne of which he was very fond.[211]
He found Clay, with whom he was to be associated in the fights against
Jackson, in the Speaker’s chair, and fell under the spell of his
fascination. It was then, too, that he formed his intense admiration for
Calhoun.
His hostility to Jackson and Jacksonian methods was first manifested in
his support of the resolutions censuring the General for his course in
Florida. There is no doubt that at this time he had formed a deep-seated
prejudice against the military hero. “We are engaged with Jackson and
the President,” he wrote home at the time. “I do not hesitate to say
that the constitutional powers of the House of Representatives have been
violated in the capture and detention of Pensacola and the Barancas;
that Jackson overstepped his orders; and that the President has
improperly approved his proceedings, and that the whole are
culpable.”[212] But there was a more powerful and less personal reason
for his enmity to the Jackson Administration, which developed during
this period. He had already become a sectionalist. Like Calhoun in later
life, and Webster in 1820, he began to sense a struggle between the
sections over the balance of power. Thus early he commenced to question
the permanency of the Union. In the Missouri fight, in a strong speech
against the restriction of slavery, he alone, among all participating on
his side, advanced the proposition that the Congress possessed no
constitutional power to pass a law prohibiting slavery in the
Territories.[213] We find him writing[214] that “men talk of the
dissolution of the Union with perfect nonchalance and indifference.”
When, in his thirty-first year, he voluntarily retired to private life
to retrieve his fortunes, he had made an impression so profound that it
was predicted that he would rise to high station.[215]
When in 1827 he became a candidate for the Senate against the brilliant
and vitriolic John Randolph of Roanoke, we find the elements working
that were to ripen him for the break with the Jackson Administration,
and for association with Clay’s party of incongruities and nondescripts.
After the inauguration of Adams, he had written Clay commending his
action in throwing his support to the Puritan, assuring him of his
contempt for the “bargain” story, and unnecessarily adding a fling at
Jackson: “I do not believe that the sober and reflecting people of
Virginia would have been so far dazzled by military renown as to have
conferred their suffrage upon a mere soldier--one acknowledged on every
hand to be of little value as a civilian.”[216] When Randolph so
viciously attacked Adams and Clay on the “bargain” story, Tyler became
his most uncompromising foe. In some manner his letter to Clay found its
way into the newspapers, resulting in much feeling, letter-writing,
charges and counter-charges and journalizing, and the supporters of
Tyler interpreted the use of the letter as an attempt to coerce him into
support of Jackson in 1828. If such was the purpose, it failed. He was
elected without having pledged himself, and at a complimentary dinner
after his election, he referred to Jackson in a sneering fashion.
And now we begin to understand the underlying causes that took Tyler and
other Southern Democrats out of the party and into the Whig ranks during
the Jackson period. On reaching Washington in December, 1827, we find
him writing to a correspondent: “My hopes are increased from the
following fact ... that in the nature of things, General Jackson must
surround himself by a Cabinet composed of men advocating, to a great
extent, the doctrines so dear to us. Pass them in review before
you--Clinton, Van Buren, Tazewell, Cheves, Macon, P. P. Barbour, men
who, in the main, concur with us in sentiment. Furthermore, General
Jackson will have to encounter a strong opposition. He will require an
active support at our hands. Should he abuse Virginia by setting at
nought her political sentiments, he will find her at the head of the
opposition, and he will probably experience the fate of J. Q. A.”[217]
The Cabinet, when announced, does not seem to have satisfied him,
albeit Van Buren, of whose views on slavery extension he appears to have
been misinformed, was a member. The presence of Berrien and Branch
ought, perhaps, to have reassured him, but they were a minority, and
they did not satisfy Calhoun, of whom they were devoted disciples.
Thus, from the very beginning of the Jackson régime, Tyler was
suspicious, and ripe for the Opposition. In the spoils system he found a
pretext for dissatisfaction, and he proceeded to develop this into a
rather petty persecution. It would be a mistake to underrate the effect
of his opposition. He was highly respected by his colleagues. His
dignity, courtliness, urbanity, and ease gave him a certain social
prestige. He was an interesting and likable companion, and his polished
conversation had impelled an English novelist[218] to describe it as
superior to that of any one he had met in America. His appearance was
not against him. Tall and slender, of patrician mould, his Roman nose,
firm mouth, broad and lofty brow, and honest blue eyes combined to give
him a distinction that marked him in an assembly. He was not a mere
professional politician of a type to be developed later in the Republic.
His letters to his daughter[219] concerning her studies, on poetry,
fiction, and history, denote a discriminating student and lover of
literature. It was this occasional detachment from the political world
which made it possible for him, during the famous debate on the Foot
Resolution, to entertain himself in the Senate Chamber in the reading of
Moore’s “Life of Byron.” We shall now observe him launch the White
Terror against the Red.
III
Among the nominations, mostly for comparatively minor positions, sent to
the Senate by Jackson were those of a “batch of editors.”[220] Strangely
enough, this seems to have rather affronted the somewhat ponderous
dignity of that body. So strongly did it then impress the Senate that it
has made an ugly impression upon a number of historians. Even
Schouler[221] is distressed to find so many mere “press writers” on the
list. Whether the fact that they were mere editors was enough to make
them “infamous characters,” we are left to conjecture. The secret of the
strange antipathy to a class long conceded to be among the most
influential of any nation is probably to be found in the fact that until
this time the lawyers were conceded a monopoly in public station. There
was a reason for Jackson’s change of policy, and it grew out of the
organization of party and the democratization of government. Unlike his
predecessors, he had not depended for support, nor did he expect to look
exclusively for support to the professional politicians and the wealthy.
As a candidate his appeal had been--for the first time in American
history--to the people. As a President he proposed to look to the same
quarter. With the people actually established as the ultimate power in
the State, according to the theory of American institutions, he was not
unmindful of the necessity of reaching the people with his case. He was
the first President fully to appreciate the power of the press. He could
see no reason why men capable of presenting and popularizing a policy or
principle should be excluded from the privilege of helping put it in
operation.
In the campaign of 1828 he had been opposed by the greater portion of
the press, but he had found champions--men of capacity and talent, who
had fought the good fight for him, and not without effect. The
assumption that all these men were bribed by the promise of place would
be a violent one indeed. And the “batch of editors” whose names he sent
to the Senate were men who had long been attached to the cause that
Jackson personified. Some had more recently allied themselves with the
cause, but in every instance there was a sound reason for the change of
front, and in these cases it does not appear that they had met the
President in the campaign or had any expectations.
And these men, having received recess appointments, were at their posts
or on their way. Those already at their posts had given ample proof of
their capacity. One, against whom considerable bitterness was felt, had
speedily uncovered the peculations of a highly respectable predecessor
who was not a “press writer,” and that gentleman was languishing in the
penitentiary. The Senate, apparently, did not consider this a service to
the State worthy of reward. While there can be no doubt that the
partisan enemies of Jackson were delighted at the opportunity personally
to affront him, and while it is certain that Clay’s friends were anxious
to punish one, and Adams’s friends to humiliate another, the actual
conspiracy to defeat the confirmation of the editors originated with
John Tyler, in close coöperation with Senator Tazewell of Virginia--who
was still smarting under his defeat in the contest with Van Buren for
the secretaryship of State.
The editors who thus fell under the haughty displeasure of the Senate
were Major Henry Lee, James B. Gardner, Moses Dawson, Mordecai M. Noah,
Amos Kendall, and Isaac Hill.
Charges of a personal nature were made against Lee, who had been
appointed consul-general to Algiers. He was a half-brother of Robert E.
Lee and a man of brilliant parts. During the campaign he had lived with
Jackson at the Hermitage “writing for his election some of the finest
campaign papers ever penned in this country.”[222] One who saw him there
at the time has recorded his impressions. “He was not handsome, as his
half-brother, Robert E. Lee, but rather ugly in face--a mouth without a
line of the bow of Diana about it, and nose, not clean-cut and classic,
but rather meaty, and, if we may use the word, ‘blood meaty’; but he
was one of the most attractive men in conversation we ever listened
to.”[223] He had served in the Virginia House of Delegates with Tyler,
and had been a college mate. “Moreover,” writes Tyler, “I regarded him
as a man of considerable intellectual attainments and of a high order of
talent.”[224] But this did not operate in his favor. He had assisted in
the writing of Jackson’s inaugural address, and is said to have been
mostly responsible for its literary form. The fact that his morals were
not considered impeccable was sufficient as a pretext, and the news of
his rejection reached him in Paris, where he died. Tyler afterwards
protested that he had found it painful to vote against his confirmation,
and had expressed his opinion of Lee’s “innocence of certain more
aggravated additions to the charge under which he labored.”
Isaac Hill, of the “New Hampshire Patriot,” was easily slaughtered on
the ground that during the campaign he had “slandered Mrs. Adams.” In
addition to the publication of his paper, the most vigorous and clever
Jacksonian organ in New England, he conducted a publishing house, and
his offense lay in having published a book in which Mrs. Adams was
described as an “English woman” with little sympathy for American
institutions. The hollowness of this excuse is evident in the fact that
several Senators who had been shocked at this offense had regaled
drawing-rooms with jokes of Mrs. Jackson’s pipe, and on Mrs. Eaton’s
being a proper “lady in waiting” for the President’s wife since “birds
of a feather flock together.”[225] The real reason for his rejection was
that he had incurred the bitter enmity of the Opposition by his telling
paragraphs during the campaign. Immediately after his rejection, two
Senators hastened to the home of John Quincy Adams with the news, and
the old man made the comment in his diary that night that Hill “was the
editor of the ‘New Hampshire Patriot,’ one of the most slanderous
newspapers against the late Administration, and particularly against me,
in the country.”
Mordecai M. Noah, editor of the “National Advocate” of New York City,
appointed surveyor and inspector of the port of New York, appears to
have tickled the risibles of the Senators of the Opposition, though his
distinguished career entitles him to the respect of posterity. One
important and memorable service to the Nation should have made him
immune from the common hate. Sixteen years before he had been sent as
consul to Tunis with a special mission to Algiers. We had been paying an
annual tribute to Algiers for the privilege of navigating the
Mediterranean, and Noah, the journalist, had denounced the practice and
declared that the money could be better spent in the building of
warships. He succeeded on his Algerian mission in ransoming American
prisoners who were being held in slavery, but such was the bigotry of
the time that, after his work was done, he was recalled on the flimsy
pretense that his Jewish religion was impossible in Tunis. At the time
he was honored by Jackson, he was not only distinguished by his public
service, but because of his journalistic genius, and he had written his
“Travels in England, France, Spain, and the Barbary States.” He deserves
his place in Morais’s “Eminent Israelites of the 19th Century.” But he
had rendered valuable service to Jackson in the campaign, and the
bigoted members of the Senate rejected him with much hilarity.
The first setback the Opposition received came in the consideration of
the nomination of Amos Kendall, of the “Kentucky Argus.” He had, at the
time, served for months with marked ability as auditor of the Treasury,
rooting out old and vicious practices, uncovering the crimes of his
predecessor, but he had left the camp of Clay to do yeoman service for
Jackson, and that was quite enough. Adams himself was deeply interested
in his humiliation. In the midst of the campaign he had been consulted
by Clay touching upon “testimony given by Amos Kendall before the Senate
of Kentucky intended to support charges against Mr. Clay of corrupt
bargaining with me”; and, on Clay’s representation, no doubt, describes
the editor as “one of those authors to let, whose profligacy is the
child of his poverty.” But the vote on Kendall was a tie, and Calhoun
cast the deciding vote in his favor.
Tyler was delighted with his work. “On Monday we took the printers in
hand,” he wrote. “Kendall was saved by the casting vote of the Vice
President.... Hendricks [Indiana], who was supported by the last
Administration, was induced to vote for him and in that way he was
saved. Out of those presented to the Senate, but two squeezed through,
and that with the whole power of the Government here thrown in the
scale.”[226] Kendall tells an interesting story which shows that the
friends of Calhoun were quietly at work to convince the rejected editors
that their humiliation had been brought about through the secret
influence of Van Buren. Even then the Little Magician, as Van Buren was
called, was considered the greatest obstacle in the way of the South
Carolinian’s progress toward the White House, and it was the evident
purpose to send the editors, miserable “press writers” though they were,
back to their papers to fight the aspirations of Van Buren. Before the
vote was taken on Kendall, he was approached by Duff Green, of the
“National Telegraph,” Calhoun’s organ, and assured that the Van Buren
influence was responsible for the fight against him. This aroused the
curiosity of the clever Kendall, who “had never heard of such
influence,” and he instantly surmised the meaning of the message. Thus,
when Green, predicting his rejection, suggested that the Kentuckian
could return to the “Argus,” the latter replied that he would remain in
Washington in that event.
The effect of these rejections on Jackson was like a slap in the face.
It aroused all the lion in his nature. He had grown fond of the editors
who had so vigorously fought his battles, and his heart was set on their
reward. It was the Senate’s first challenge, and it was instantly
accepted. It was clear that nothing could be done for Lee, where the
vote was unanimous, but Jackson decided to renominate Noah, and we find
Tyler writing to Tazewell: “The President this morning renominated Noah.
This is a prelude to Hill’s renomination. Your presence, I apprehend,
would be immaterial, as the result of any vote upon these subjects would
not be varied. Monday is fixed for the consideration of Noah’s
case.”[227] On the second attempt, Noah was confirmed, like Kendall,
with the casting vote of Calhoun.
But the President had other plans for his favorite, Hill, over whose
sharp retorts the General had so heartily chuckled during the campaign.
Webb, the editor of the “Courier and Enquirer” of New York, denounced in
his paper the Senate’s rejection of Hill. “Isaac Hill,” he wrote, “is a
printer and was the editor of the ‘New Hampshire Patriot.’ He was always
the friend of his country and its republican institutions, and when that
country, during the late war, was about to be sold by traitors to the
enemy; when the war was declared wicked and unjustifiable, and the
Hartford Convention meditated the formation of a separate treaty with
England, his voice was heard in the Granite State and in the mountains
of Vermont, animating the people and arousing them to a just sense of
their danger, and the blessings of freedom. He was a thorn in the side
of the Tories, and though living in the hotbed of the Opposition, he
pursued his course fearlessly, independently, and successfully.” Writing
from Jefferson Barracks, General Henry Leavenworth entered his protest,
a non-partisan one: “Isaac Hill with his ‘New Hampshire Patriot’ did
more than any one man known to me to put down the ‘peace societies’
during the war,” he wrote, and he described enlistments under him
following Hill’s patriotic exhortations.
It is more than probable that these protests were not uninspired, and
that the fine Italian hand of Amos Kendall, who had already become the
managerial genius of the Administration, was in them. Certain it is that
the most effective move was that of Kendall in writing to the Democracy
of New Hampshire that the President “has entire confidence in Mr. Hill
and looks upon his rejection as a blow aimed at himself,” and putting it
up to the legislature to “wipe away the stigma cast upon this just and
true man, by the unjust and cruel vote of the Senate.” The New Hampshire
Democrats understood, and a little later Isaac Hill walked down the
aisle of the Senate that had humiliated and rejected him to take the
oath as a Senator of the United States.
Thus the Senate’s fight against Jackson began at the earliest possible
moment. Clay had begun his denunciations of the Administration before it
was three weeks old; and the Senate sought an opportunity personally to
affront the President before he had announced a policy or a programme.